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Wednesday, March 05, 2014

Putin Love- From The Left & Right

Something which has been obvious for some time is that any newspaper that criticises Putin will be overwhelmed with comments supportive of the Kremlin. Indeed judging from newspaper comment sections you would think that far from being one of the least trusted governments on Earth, as polls suggest, that Putin was wildly popular. Part of that is paid Russian shills as could be inferred by the tone and poor English of many comments but some of them are genuine.

These appear to people on the far left- the Seamus Milnes and George Galloways of this world- and those on the paleo right. I don't mean the strict non interventionists who have been dismayed by the disastrous result of the Iraq War but those who are actually pro-Putin. While few on the right are quite as craven as Pat Buchanan who seems to think that the USA should be run from Moscow the idea does keep coming up that Putin is a conservative.

It's true to an extent, but only because conservative is a meaningless term in an international sense. If what you're conserving is state autocracy and unchecked power you aren't exactly a political descendent of Edmond Burke. Some point to his campaign for "family values" and religion, but on that basis Mullah Omar is an ally- there is a dividing line between "Culturally conservative" and "Primitive".

Others seem to like him because he is hostile to the EU. I favour leaving the EU but to find the organisation to be worse than Putin's Russia shows a complete lack of proportion. The EU passes directives that interfere in an unwarranted manner in domestic politics, Russia invades countries who refuse to let the Kremlin decide their economic alliances. Of course he is quite useful for Europhiles in any case- who thinks the British public would vote for withdrawal from an international club while a dictator is attacking isolated countries?

7 comments:

And whose democratically elected governments have just been ousted by neo-Nazi, intensely Russophobic mobs, and in which they restrict their activities to one area in which the majority of the residents are, er, not only pro-Russian but seem quite happy to see them there.

Yes, Ross, Russia in Crimea really is just like the Soviet Union in Afghanistan; and this post rseems about as silly as as your repeated assertions that President Putin is not only light-footed but also light on his feet.

Calling the Ukrainians "Russophobic" while their country is currently being invaded is as inane as calling Danish cartoonists in hiding from Islamic terrorists "Islamophobic".

As for the Russian government's propaganda line that the protestors were neo-Nazis- it's funny how actual neo-Nazis seem ecstatic over Putin's invasion- just go over to forums like Stormfront if you doubt it.

In fact actual Putin supporting Nazis like Israel Shamir are among those who are accusing the Ukrainian demonstrators of being Nazis (and confusingly Jewish puppets as well).

I would argue that Putin is "conservative" in certain of the senses that the word is generally used in the US nowadays. He's anti-gay, he's forming a tight alliance between church and state, and he's trying to restore an idealized past era which was actually very ugly -- in his case, the Soviet era rather than the 1950s as with American conservatives.

Those kinds of things are what mostly come to mind in the US when the word "conservative" is used. Hardly anyone has even heard of Burke.

Is it being invaded? Really? Have the Russians disrupted Ukrainian communications, taken over the broadcasting and mobile networks, cut the landlines and Internet, seized all the airports and all other vital infrastructure, sent armoured divisions over the border, bombed Kiev, taken the new government into custody and placed Ukraine under martial law? Have they done these things? No, they haven't, so describing what has happened as a Russian invasion of Ukraine is overblown nonsense

What they say they have done is, as far as I can see from my place of safety on the other side of Europe, what they actually have done - entered a Russian majority area in order to protect ethnic Russians who seem quite happy for them to be there.

I haven't visited Stormfront since getting my own hate page on it a decade ago, and I'm not going there now.

"In fact actual Putin supporting Nazis like Israel Shamir are among those who are accusing the Ukrainian demonstrators of being Nazis (and confusingly Jewish puppets as well)" -

So Israel Shamir (the name is familiar, I can't immediately place it) says the Ukrainian demonstrators are 'Nazis' or whatever - so this means they are automatically not Nazis, does it? Everything that this guy, whoever he is, claims to be the case is automatically a lie, is it? I'm sorry if I seem to be uncharitable, but that is the argument you appear to be making in your previous comment.